SelectedQuotations From

Dr Paul Vereshack's

Help Me - I'm Tired of
Feeling Bad

"Humankind has remained
hidden from itself from the dawn of time.This hiding rests on one
simple brain mechanism.When we feel, we act.This outwardness
displaces us away from ourselves. It is the easiest way to reduce
tension.If we reverse this mechanism, if we lie down and continue to
feel the feeling, instead of acting on it, and if we externalize this
feeling with sounds and words, we are drawn downward into our own
depths.At this point, the dishonesty, which is intrinsic to our
species, ends."

* * *

"When a
person has a powerful feeling about a present event, almost always the
identical feeling has existed in the past having accompanied an earlier
traumatic event. " -- Chapter 4

* * *

"These
insights well up instantly, seemingly from the whole body. They move like
a wave front or wall of comprehension, seeming to originate from the
abdomen, chest, bones and muscles, moving upward into consciousness. They
do not feel like thoughts; they feel like sudden illuminations. They have
the quality of sun suddenly breaking through cloud, illuminating the
darkened landscape around us in a single awe-inspiring burst of
comprehension." -- Chapter 5

* * *

"Skin
hunger is well known in the world of infants. Lack of skin contact gives
rise to depression and death. This process in infants has been well known
since the studies of Spitz and Bowlby conducted before World War II. In
foundling homes, babies fed and kept clean experienced depression, and
finally death, unless they were touched." -- Chapter 6

* * *

- "I've been feeling awful lately. Is it common for
people to feel worse and worse in this kind of therapy?

- Yes it is." -- Chapter
8

* * *

"The
therapist must believe in the central paradox of feeling-oriented therapy
that if we go to the centre of the most painful and difficult feelings, no
matter where they lead, and re-experience their shame and horror, we will
gradually unburden and heal. Therapy is rarely straightforward and usually
takes months or years to bring these experiences to the surface. Even
after we do so, individual growth sequences must often be repeated many,
many times." -- Chapter 8

* * *

"I have
floundered in a parenting and we have floundered in a civilization that
has no discernible relationship to its truth. In my pain, I have been
impassioned to find civilization's truth. The deeper I have gone, the more
alone I have been and the sounds of my fellow human beings in their
intellectual journeys have been like rain falling on a distant roof. I
have learned that nothing is what it seems and any patient who comes to me
learns the same awesome lesson." -- Chapter 9

* * *

"Wanting
to do deep work is a crucially important factor in doing it. Wanting,
however, does not mean that a person can or would work in this way. Many
people who want to do regressive therapy find that their defences will not
allow it. They just cannot get down there. Others who can reach these
levels should not attempt to do so. their pain may be too great, their ego
structures too weakened by childhood experiences. " -- Chapter 9

* * *

"When
pain connects to its original source the agony can be immense but, at the
very same moment or shortly thereafter, we sense an enormous rightness in
the event. We know that at last we are on the road to health and, dimly
though it may be perceived sunlight begins to break over the darkened
landscape of our life. Pain becomes our friend. It is like the noise of a
rusty hinge as we open a long-unused door to find a treasure which will
illuminate our existence." -- Chapter 15

* * *

"We
concentrate on pain because it is our signal that something within us has
not yet been worked through. Joy will come later, as a by-product of the
work we do." -- Chapter 17

* * *

"The
ever-watchful unconscious will only let you in when it finally perceives
that you have taken up the sword of inwardness and that you will not be
turned aside. Then, and only then, will it begin to yield its ground to
you. It tests you with serious discomfort. If, in spite of this, you
remain implacably oriented toward it, it will fill your mind with its
awesome and bittersweet treasures." -- Chapter 19

* * *

"You must
enter the paradox of embracing deeper and deeper pain in order to get rid
of it (the central paradox of therapy). When you do this your reward will
be to make deep connections, and to experience profound release from
lifelong tension and dysfunction. You will also gain profound insight into
yourself and all aspects of your world including the manipulative behavior
of those around you." -- Chapter 19

"Chronic
anxiety is one of the best tools we have; it is the entrance to the deeper
self and, in the end, it will always yield to our techniques, bringing
relief and insight." -- Chapter 20

* * *

"There
will be instances where people, beleaguered in mind, in body and in
spirit, with nowhere to turn and no one to turn to, will use this manual
without guidance. To you, I say, go slowly and with great care,
remembering that whenever you turn to anyone for advice and help, unless
they are accomplished depth therapists, you will sooner or later, be the
object of their 'defensive wisdom.' As you trigger within them their own
unworked-through feelings, they will advise you from mechanisms within
their own false self. This advice will have as its common denominator an
attempt to keep you from feeling your pain." -- Chapter 26

* * *

"Trauma does not have to be sudden and dramatic. It
can happen in small ways over a long period of time." -- Chapter 2

* * *

"The human mind if allowed to
feel will heal itself." -- Chapter 8

* * *

"How much easier it is to
hate, than to turn inward and face our fear." -- Chapter 20

* * *

"Denial stands at the
intersection of true and false in the mind. It keeps the seemingly
negative or dark side of us so deeply frozen within our unconscious that
most people go to their graves without knowing even a small portion of
their deeper self." -- Chapter 20

* * *

"Feelings are the x-rays of
the mind, and although they may begin in confusion, in the end, if we go
deeply enough, they do not lie." -- Chapter 20

* * *

". . . I believe that most
adult suicides are really childhood suicides that have been delayed and
acted out much, much later." -- Chapter 20

* * *

"Feel it and you will be
freed from it. . . . It is astounding how the vast majority of
psychotherapists and the vast majority of patients will do anything to
avoid this truth." -- Chapter 2

* * *

"Our job, as therapists, is
to bring the past into view. Our job as . . . regressive therapists, is to
arrange a feeling of the congruence between the present and the past
event, powerful enough so that past events are reactivated and relived in
the therapy room. " -- Chapter 4

* * *

"It is doubtful to me and to
almost every patient with whom I have ever spoken, that depth therapy can
be pursued without the presence of a depth therapist." -- Chapter 26

* * *

"People in deep therapy can
become seriously disabled for months or years, mired in an ever-deepening
cycle of pain and dysfunction." -- Chapter 1

* * *

"About half of my patients
can learn to focus deeply within their feelings. About one person in eight
does continuous Level Four therapy." -- Chapter 9

* * *

". . . The deeper you go, the
more necessary it will be for you to have continuous therapy supervision."
-- Chapter 17

* * *

"It is easier to murder
symbolically, or actually, then it is to feel the overwhelming sadness and
rage of early parental betrayal." -- Chapter 9

* * *

"(It) would seem that
personality is a construct founded upon a base of terror." -- Chapter 8

* * *

"It will usually be some
time, weeks or months, before the confidence to actually lie down alone
and do the therapy work emerges." -- Chapter 9

* * *

"Everyone I have ever met
wants relief from pain. Only one in three people who have come unscreened
into my practice are prepared to fight for this release through aiming
themselves into their own depths with courage, energy and determination. .
. One in three are prepared to give up their sense that their pain exists
because other people are hurting them." -- Chapter Nineteen

* * *

"Even if we do know what is
wrong in the present, more often than not it is resonating with something
we do not know in the past." Chapter -- 14

* * *

"There may be times of
extraordinary terror on your journey." -- Chapter 26

* * *

"More than two-thirds of my
patients have reported an enhanced sense of spirituality." -- Chapter 28